The Paperboy Review

24th Jul 2013

I was promised Matthew McConaughey’s bare arse. The promise was made good. Five stars.

But in seriousness, The Paperboy is a remarkably good film. It follows a basic enough premise involving two brothers, a social outcast and a peroxide tart (with a heart) digging up the past in the name of justice and love; the simplicity of the story allows for some very complex and impressive acting to shine through, not least from Zac ‘High-School-Musical-What?’ Efron and Nicole Kidman, who I’d all but forgotten about in recent years. A star turn from Macy Gray as the sometime narrator of the film and omniscient Help to brother journalists Jack and Ward Jansen is another point for the singer-turned-actor camp.

This really is Efron’s film; having just been kicked out of college, throwing away a career as a star swimmer for losing his temper and draining the pool (“that’s classed as vandalism…”), Jack Jansen returns to his stagnant Miami home to join his brother and his writing partner, Yardley (David Oyelowo) – a classic case of ‘black man in a white man’s world’- uncover the truth behind the conviction of Hilary Van Wetter (John Cusack, with uncanny physical conviction in this role), a man they believe to have been wrongly committed of murdering a sheriff and consigned to the electric chair. Enter into the mix Charlotte Bless, Van Wetter’s sexually charged, “over-sexed Barbie doll” pen pall and fiancé, and Jack finds himself a-swirl in a sea of confused hormones, flared tempers and jelly fish. Oh yes; jelly fish.

Efron excels in a role which demands the complexities of flaring hormones and understated-drama of a young man left by the wayside dealing with incredibly ‘mature’ issues. He acts with finesse and attention to detail, and wonderfully understated compassion, for which I am very grateful to director Lee Daniels; this is a successful envisioning of what must have been a very specific and introspective mood for the film, and one which could easily have been spoiled with the smallest hint of over-acting from its young star. Matthew McConaughey, it goes without saying, is his usual superb self, although I would say with caution that his role is somewhat less demanding, and more one-track, than Efron’s. Kidman too, though also in a fairly single-dimension part, breezes through the film with an effortless portrayal as the ‘alternative’ option love interest.

The supporting roles are expertly filled by the renowned likes of Scott Glenn and Ned Bellamy, though it is a small but perfectly formed cast. Roberto Schaefer’s cinematography perfectly evokes the dulled, hot, arid tones of 1960s suburban Miami, and ties together the individual elements of this film – the costumes, the picture-perfect sets – to create a hard edged window into an America gone but certainly not forgotten by modern cinema, though rarely portrayed with such blessed understatement.